Scientists probed the boundaries of life and death through experiments, studies and inventions. One physician from London, James Blundell, was troubled by the fact that numerous women during childbirth after suffering massive bleeding. He then introduced an apparatus that he designed to transfuse blood from one person to another.

Blundell's Gravitator
Pennsylvania State University Libraries, Reproduction of an illustration from The Lancet, 1828-1829. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/frank_birth.html